


In Any Life, In Any Form

by CoffeeMilkAndTea



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Help, I don't know how to tag this, no one's names are directly mentioned, old bat hades, young peresphone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 00:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9936032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeMilkAndTea/pseuds/CoffeeMilkAndTea
Summary: He sits there in the rain, watching the streets empty. Water is trickling into his coat, past it's black leathers. And this is what he thinks to himself:The world has grown large and swollen with humans, with their greed. It feels like death.•Old fic. Finally satisfied with it.





	

He sits there in the rain, watching the streets empty. Water is trickling into his coat, past it's black leathers. And this is what he thinks to himself:  
The world has grown large and swollen with humans, with their greed. It feels like death.

Like his realm.   
(The human realm now is full of riches, cold and dark. Nothing grows--The middle class live ordinary lives... It as if they never left the fields of Asphodel)

When was it last an intermediary? He wonders.   
And suddenly, the rain stops. It takes him a while to notice, but when he does, he almost comes nose to nose with a young girl. 

"Hello," she greets warmly. In her hand, there is a bright red umbrella. "...Hello," he returns, hesitant. 

"Would you like my umbrella?" She queries, and he is struck by how alive and light she seems. Like a robin, her head was cocked inquisitively...

"Take it," she suddenly urges, a bright smile blooming on her face. She presses it's wooden handle into his hands, and she goes off into the rain. 

He numbly watches her disappear. Like a bird, she took flight.   
But not without leaving him behind protection. 

He looks at his hands.

Well, that was interesting.

 

•

He meets her again. This time it is in a coffee shop, and her head is dozing off on a pile of books. 

Something about this makes him uncomfortable. Before, she was very alive, and now the lights have dimmed. Now she looks vulnerable... Like a child.

Without knowing precisely why, he sits down.   
He doesn't even have the umbrella with him. 

He waits, unsure wether to wake her up or to let her continue her sleep. Despite himself, he is interested, because the three old women have seen it fit to have them meet again. 

Her lashes are very long, he notes absently as he looks at her. There are three tiny freckles on her cheek, and her hair is a fairly nondescript brown. 

Still, she is not without her own kind of beauty. He feels rather dark and old next to her.

He makes his decision, and he coughs lightly. He half hopes that she doesn't wake up, but she does, eyes opening slowly. 

When her eyes focus, a smile blooms on her face like a flower. "Hello," she half-slurs, still partially touched by the spell Morpheus has laid on her. Still, the light begins to shine in her again, and somehow he is relieved. 

"I don't have your umbrella with me," he offers, rather awkwardly. He doesn't often converse with the living, and he feels rather like a stork-- all legs and mouth and awkward. 

She yawns. It's sort of adorable, in the way that children often are. "Oh....! That's okay." She says, in the middle of yawning. She blinks a few times, and rubs her eyes. "Thank you for waking me up, I have to do my..." With a touch of self-effacing humor, she makes a half-motion around her books. 

"How are you?" She asks, smiling.

How does one answer such a thing? He asks himself, bemused. No one before has asked how he does, because the answer seems rather obvious.   
"The usual," he replies rather hesitantly. 

"The usual, huh?" She says with a hint of laughter. "That's a lot of different things to people." 

•

He doesn't quite know why, but he ended up staying to work through her books with her. Coffee cups lay around them.

(She stares at him with a kind of expression of shock. "What do you mean, you've never tried the raspberry white mocha!" Five minutes later, he's drinking it and pulling strange faces that he hasn't made in centuries and her laughter sounds like little silver bells)

"I'd REALLY rather be doing theoretical discussions upon social economics and junk like that, you know, but you can't have them all," she comments suddenly, with a kind of wry humor. 

"Oh?" He aknowledges, vaguely interested. "Yes... But it's the family business I have to pursue first, I think. Get my feet underneath me, if my mother remembers to let me run free after she gets her hooks in," she explains, and laughs merrily.

(There are piles of books on herbology, of all things underneath her fingertips. He feels a sudden wash of sadness for her. However she happens to work-- she is obviously made to think wide and far, not remember Latin names of plants.)

•

It's a while before they meet again. Still, it is only three months before he feels the irresistible urge to see her. After all, he rationalizes; he still needs to return her umbrella. 

When he arrives at his destination, it is raining again, and he can hear the rumble of thunder. 

Before him is an entrance that reads, in faded letters: "COMMUNITY GARDEN." 

Slightly bemused, he pushes open the gate and walks into the area.   
It is a rather nondescript sort of place, if neatly kept-- or what he can see of it. 

Ahead he can see a person. Quickening his pace, he hopes that it is her. The rain was cold, and he wanted to be before a hot fire. 

•

It is her. But she is kneeling in the wet dirt, listless and empty eyed. 

Thoughts of a fire forgotten, he feels a horrible feeling rises in his stomach. It feels much like fear. 

What he means to say is-- something like asking her if he can help. What comes out is; "I have your umbrella," he offers gravely, and holds it out over her head. 

As the rain stopped pouring over her, life began to come back to her eyes. 

It relieves him. Watching something like that looked horrible and unnatural, as if against the natural order of things. He doesn't quite understand why it bothers him so, but he doesn't question it, either.

When she finally looks up, he wants to sigh with relief. "Hello," he greets, half-remembering that this was not entirely dissimilar to their initial meeting, either. 

A tiny smile, light somehow on her lips made itself known on her face.   
"Hi."

•   
They find themselves huddled in a nearby bathroom, barely bigger than a closet and toweling themselves off with the paper ones available. 

"What brought you to the garden?" He asks, eventually. "It is raining."

She pauses mid-toweling, and another little smile crosses her face. "Maybe it was that I was waiting for you, though I did not know it..."

•

Years later, many memories together, she tells him a secret.   
"Where is your mother?" He asks, placing a hand over the smooth wood of her kitchen table. 

"Out gardening," she says, putting down a bowl of fruit. 

"She is out gardening very often." He observes, and looks at her. For the first time, she looks back when he says this. The look in her eyes is strange.   
"Maybe you know her... Her name is-" 

He felt a shiver of something cold go down his back.

(Every name on earth, he will know if they come to him.)  
(Her mother will never come to him.)

It is with perfect truth that he states that he does not know her. 

• 

She is no longer a child. Beautiful unlike any other he finds her, and yet he hesitates.   
They have known each other for a very long time now. 

It is raining again, and this time they are together under the shelter of a bus stop. Sometimes she likes to go out during these times and show him something. 

She takes his hand and squeezes it.   
"I love you, you know." She says very conversationally, as if she said it many times before. Maybe she has and he wasn't paying attention.

Without much warning, tears began trickling down his face. 

And she pulls him down and begins gently kissing them away. 

•

"I have to go." He confesses to her, sitting on her bed. 

"Back?" She inquires, and he nods. "When will I see you again?" He asks, because she will not. The words taste bittersweet.

This time, she puts her hands in his and states:

"Take me with you." 

•

He does. He can't resist, knowing that it is the last time he will see her.

When she steps on the land of the dead, something very unusual happens:

A single flower began blooming at her feet. 

Seeing the wonder on her face, however silences any questions he might have. He can always ask her later. 

•

This time it is his turn to take her through his lands. And unexpectedly it is pleasurable to watch her running through, beautiful and happy and full of wonder. 

She takes time to talk to every creature, large and small, wide or thin. She invigorates his lands. 

He begins wondering what it would be like to make her his queen.

•

"You can't eat the food here," he tells her. "They're offerings for the residents." 

She nods solemnly. "I thought as much." 

She is a little thinner, but still appeared full of life. If she were truly human, she would not be living as she did in the land of the dead. But even-- a god--- 

He stops himself from wandering down that pathway of thought; except a tiny, horrible thought escapes and sinks to the pit of his stomach.

(It is: Even gods need to eat)

•

He finds her one day, looking longingly at a fruit tree. (It is a fruit tree that had sprung up beneath her feet-- an alien inhabitant in the land of the dead.)

With some trepidation, he inquires: "Are you hungry?" 

He watches sadness flicker across her face as she nods.

"Do you wish to return above?" He eventually asks, reluctant. If she returns, they might never see each other again. 

He had dreaded this day.

And then, he sees her shake her head and reach for a low-hanging fruit. 

•

He watches with disbelief as she bites into food. She eats half of the pomegranate, before looking up at him and offering the other half.

 

Wordless, he eats too.

•

The earth above them, unbeknownst to the both of them begins to decay. Plastic begins to fill the ocean; the icebergs begin to melt and great hurricanes race across the sea, spreading devastation and chaos. The lands become barren in entire countries and governments fall prey to war. 

•

One day, he receives a visitor at the gates of the Underworld.

"Who do you have," his visitor challenges without preamble. Electricity appears to race across his skin, his hair. Except it isn't skin or hair; they are tiny roads and buildings, a thousand live wires.

The look in his visitors eyes is terrible to behold. "Tell me," he demands. 

•

One day, when he finds her watching the endless sea of the dead filing into his realm, he confesses to her of what had come to pass.

•

"I love you," she states, those terrible, beautiful words that make him want to protect her.   
"I will return to you." She pledges at the gates, face shadowed by the bars between them. 

And when she goes, it feels like she took his meaning of life with her.

•

When she returns to the world above, she grows and grows and grows--

•

Years pass. Hundreds of years-- maybe thousands. He doesn't know any longer.

•

Tired, happy, she returns one day to the land of the dead and knocks on the gate. She is a little more ragged, but healthier than when she had left. Rebuilding has aged her, somewhat. 

When he opens the gates and they get a good look at each other; she exclaims:

"I'm home!" 

Upon hearing those long-awaited words, his heart feel so full of light and happiness, he feels like he should burst...

His arms become full of her, and it feels like he is holding life itself.


End file.
